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Of Intelligent Markets, Uneducated Voters, and Billionaires that Care: Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom and the Neoliberal Democratic Imaginary
No full textIn the reading that this essay presents, Jonathan Franzen’s 2010 novel Freedom engages with a peculiar kind of transhumanism that inheres in neoliberal thought. Twentieth-century theorists such as Friedrich von Hayek pushed forward an ostensibly modern form of governance that does not rely on human voters for choosing adept leaders and planning economic processes but ascribes superior intelligence to markets, which are assumed to enhance limited human cognitive abilities. Freedom takes the neoliberal democratic imaginary to a logical extreme as it plays out the idea of trading the environment as a high-end commodity in a market. In doing so, it puts to the test a fantasy of neoliberal governance where the political issue of nature conservation is more effectively resolved by the market and price system than by a democracy that grounds popular sovereignty in voter majorities and the political leaders they elect
“Will you ever win?”: The Origins of the Willful Wife in Slap Shot
No full textSlap Shot’s Lily Braden is the origin of what I term the “willful wife.” The “willful wife” is a unique character of the hockey film genre as she appears in nearly every popular post-Slap Shot hockey film but is incredibly rare in other sports films. I define the willful wife as the girlfriend/wife of an athlete, in literature or film, who is unhappy with her partner’s devotion to sport, and so demands that he be a more attentive boyfriend/husband and/or father; however, later in the story, the willful wife then either illogically drops her demand or forgets about her previous relationship problems and reconciles with the athlete-protagonist. This article argues that Slap Shot is often considered a comedy rather than a satirical comedy, and as a result, Lily’s satirical journey in the film has been misread, which has led to the sexist legacy of the willful wife in the hockey genre. The resulting popular hockey film genre reproduces Lily’s “willful wife” storyline without any of her story’s satire or politics and in doing so, the genre ignores Lily’s critique of (dominant) heteropatriarchal hockey culture that relies on devaluing and demeaning women
Critical Reflection on Cultural Competence: The Teacher as an Autoethnographic Researcher
No full textIn this paper, I explore the importance of incorporating principles of social justice and cultural awareness in 21st century education. Specifically, I explore the utilization of autoethnographic research as a powerful tool for non-Indigenous teachers to enhance their cultural awareness. To illustrate this, I present a vignette featuring an Australian Indigenous child deeply connected to his culture to describe how a culturally insensitive school counsellor misdiagnosed him with a global developmental delay. In contrast, the child’s teachers strived to avoid cultural insensitivity and challenge institutional racism by assessing the child and taking into account local funds of knowledge. To enrich the understanding of cultural competence, I integrate Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) social ecological model, a global framework, with the Australian Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF). The EYLF, developed based on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, reinforces the importance of international children’s rights and may support non-Indigenous teachers’ understanding of Indigenous children. By combining these approaches, educators can foster a culturally aware and inclusive environment for their students
La fonction polyvalente de l’écriture picturale de Lynette Viadom-Boakye
No full textLa perspective développée par Lynette Viadom-Boakye est celle d’une peinture-écriture instaurée par l’idée d’une réaction vitale contre le réel. Elle est peintre et se découvre des talents d’écrivaine dans la création d’un récit de soi nommé le lieu-récit. Son engagement montre qu’elle est subtilement politisée car elle peint uniquement des êtres de couleur noire ou des êtres humains Noirs en contact avec des animaux domestiqués : perroquets, aigles, hiboux. Elle est une écrivaine tourmentée par le désir de voir et de ne plus rivaliser toujours avec elle-même : elle vit triomphalement l’imaginaire verbal par le passage à l’image peinte. Ce qui semble vital, relève de la présence subtile et fugitive de silhouettes humaines qui rêvent et s’éveillent à l’interférence de l’imaginaire née de la magie du rêve et de l’utopie fictionnelle. Ces silhouettes humaines réclament d’échapper à la hiérarchie de sexe : dominant/dominé, fort/faible. Ces êtres humains sont réceptifs aux sons des mots, vivent des événements intimes, secrets et vitaux. Ils souhaitent être reconnus comme « citoyens du monde ». Il s’agit de ne plus mettre en doute le geste de l’artiste à s’ouvrir au voyage poétique des mots subordonnés à une poїétique de l’errance fictionnelle dans ses œuvres. La méthodologie pratiquée sera la suivante : expliquer la poїétique de l’errance fictionnelle de l’écriture picturale de l’artiste
Feminist Strategies Against Digital Violence: Embodying and Politicizing the Internet
No full textThis article aims to analyze feminist strategies against digital violence and their relation to performative forms of social justice. Based on new feminist materialisms (Coole & Frost, 2010; Souza, 2019), the article shows how female bodies are at the crossroads in our digital society. On the one hand, they are a target of digital violence because of their political activities, while on the other hand feminist protesters are opening new political possibilities for mobilization. By conducting a digital ethnography with two social collectives located in Mexico City – Luchadoras and Laboratorio de Interconectividades – I argue that embodying and politicizing technologies are strategies to mobilize the body as a political, critical and material category, which reveals a renewed feminist agency in hacking the hegemonic meanings of digital technology and resignifying its materiality in order to politicize it. Furthermore, I argue that based on the body as material category, innovative forms of social justice for feminist collectives emerge. These strategies are related to the critical questioning of technologies to repoliticize digital violence, to render visible the memories and affectations in women’s bodies, as well as to mobilize a new feminist positioning called hackfeminist self-defense. All in all, this article seeks to contribute to understanding the broader issue of feminist politics performing social justice in the digital era
“Our community needs to heal”: Using Photovoice to Explore Intergenerational Memories of Civil War with Young Central Americans in Toronto
No full textIn 2020, our research collective facilitated a photovoice project titled “Picturing Our Realities: Arts-based Reflections with Central American Youth in Canada,” which brought together young, second-generation, and one-and-a-half-generation (born in another country and moved at a young age) Central American identifying people in Toronto to talk about their experiences growing up as children of immigrants. This photovoice project reveals the ways the civil war and migration process is a haunting presence in the lives of second and 1.5 generation Central American Canadians as they grow up and carve their paths as adults. We can see how unresolved social conflict emerges and shapes family memory, sense of self, understandings of community, and means of engaging in community activism and community work. We argue that this act of remembering and paying homage to previous generations is a means of confronting and resisting past injustices and forming ways of healing from the afterlives of violence. This recognition of the afterlives of mass violence, and the calls of action that this recognition entails, may form a powerful catalyst for community organizing and creating community spaces to respond to historical hauntings and structural violence
Super Visa Program: Immigration Policy Changes and Social Injustice under the Neoliberal Governmentality in Canada
No full textAbstract:
In November 2011, Citizenship and Immigration Canada paused the parents/grandparents (PGP) sponsorship immigration and announced a new Super Visa program simultaneously to facilitate family reunification, specifically among older adults waiting to be reunified with their children in Canada. We conducted a qualitative study to understand the experiences of immigrant families with the Super Visa Program. In total, 19 semi-structured interviews were conducted in Toronto with Chinese immigrants and parents holding a Super Visa. Our findings revealed that Super Visa program is helpful for family reunification, especially for those whose regular visa applications are not successful. However, Super Visa is still a visitor visa and parents/grandparents have to leave after a maximum of two years. This temporary status of their parents does not promote among immigrants a sense of belonging in Canada, but reinforces their feeling of being treated as “foreigner”. They also debunked the stigma that older parents/grandparents come to Canada for better welfare and are non-contributor and a burden to Canadian society. We observe older parents/grandparents are categorized as “undesirable” and their unpaid contributions to immigrant family and Canada society are rendered invisible. We argue there exits an inherent link between PGP policy changes and social injustice. Behind the negative portrayal of older parents/grandparents and policy changes on them is State’s neoliberal governmentality grounded upon market norms and mechanism. The immigration and social injustice inflicting on older PGP migrants manifests that neoliberal immigration regime is still structurally raced, gendered, classed, and may be intertwined with other stigmatizing dynamics such as ageist, ableist etc. within the State’s power relationship.
 
